How to root Motorola Nexus 6 (Shamu)

How to root Motorola Nexus 6 (Shamu)

Motorola Nexus 6 codenamed Shamu is a great Android phablet: slim design, large QHD touchscreen. 3 GB of RAM, front facing stereo speakers and most important – always decent Android operating system. As it is Nexus device with plain Android, you’ll need tons of apps until it gets handy enough but that’s the beauty – your phone your way. And to squeeze Shamu to the maximum, here’s how to root the device.

Why I wanted to root my Nexus 6 was to enable two-way call recording. That is a serious challenge as skvalex, developer of well known Call Recorder app, points out on XDA forum:

If manufacturers would implement call recording on their devices as described in the Android documentation, then the app worked on all devices. But they don’t. So I’ve to purchase many different phones to provide support for them. For example, a week ago I purchased Samsung SM-G906S to add support for Qualcomm 805 based devices, because without the device it’s not possible as there are no documentation or required source code. Even with a device it’s often not possible. On some devices the system provides distorted sound, people blame the app, but it’s manufacturer’s fault. If it was possible to fix, I’d fixed it.

Rooting device is usually 1st, but not necessarily winning step to enable two-way call recording. What is interesting, e. g. Samsung Galaxy Note 4 has call recording built-in native phone app, but it is disabled (at least in European version) due to possible law conflicts governing where and how you are (not)permitted to record. When device is rooted, you can gain this feature by simply editing one configuration XML file as this post explains. But when not, any file manager app won’t allow touching /system/csc/others.xml.

If you ask yourself whether it’s worth rooting device (and officially loosing guarantee) and what it is in essence, you might not want to do it. In short, as Android is Linux based, one of the key concepts exists: regular users run with limited permissions and capabilities while root users (or superusers, nowadays mostly sudoers) can do everything with the system from accessing system files to allowing or blocking network access, e. g. with nice open source firewall AFWall+ (source, Play download). More info about what rooting is and what manufacturers do to prevent it can be found on detailed Android Central article, so this time I won’t go into that.

Enough introduction, let’s begin the fun part.

At the moment of writing this walkthrough current Android version was 6.0.1 (MOB30M) but instructions should be valid for whole 6.x branch.

As you’re reading this walkthrough, suppose you’ve already got a Nexus 6 device waiting to get rooted. Then three more things will be needed:

Now get USB memory stick ready and copy UPDATE-SuperSU-v2.76-20160630161323.zip file to it. Also make sure USB flash contains at least 7-8 GB of free space if you are willing to make a backup (just in case). As Motorola Nexus 6 hasn’t got microSD memory card slot, we will be using USB stick connected to the phone’s microUSB port via USB OTG cable:

When ready, reboot your Nexus device:

fastboot reboot

Important! On many devices Android will overwrite any custom recovery image during first boot. Therefore if you wait until Android fully boots, you will loose TWRP and will have to flash it again. To install TWRP permanently, right after fastboot reboot hold hardware key combo Power + Volume down until you see Android fastboot window. Use arrow keys to navigate to RECOVERY MODE and select it by hitting Power button. Now TWRP will load:

Interface offers very smooth touch experience: options selected by tapping required item and actions confirmed or processed by swiping from right to left.

It is a good idea to navigate to Backup section and do a full backup:

Make sure you select USB OTG as target storage.

Next is time to install superuser management tool. Come back to home menu and select Install. Tap Select Storage and pick USB OTG as installation source:

And then pick SuperSU zip archive:

Wait a few moments and when it asks, reboot device. It will take time for Android to boot, so wait patiently. When it loads, in application drawer you should see SuperSU app:

Run it to verify if device is successfully rooted:

Congratulations! Now whenever certain application that is designed working as root requests superuser, SuperSU app will ask whether you want to allow it or deny:

Using Superuser is just as easy as SuperSU because apps list and settings are very similar:

Superuser applications list

Superuser settings

SuperSU applications list

SuperSU settings

So because of being open source I’d definitely choose Superuser over SuperSU, but unfortunately SuperSU is much more polished and some apps like skvalex Call Recorder simply doesn’t work with something else then SuperSU:

So I’ll keep an eye on Superuser and look forward to when it becomes as solid as TWRP is among custom recovery tools.

There is however one drawback of having device rooted – you no longer get OTA updates (that is this nice option in Settings > About phone > System Updates).

Well, in fact you will receive those updates, but an attempt to install them will fail because we have overwritten default recovery with TWRP therefore received updates cannot be applied. There’s another limitation I’ve read somewhere that when you root Android, checksums no longer match the original ones and OTA updates won’t work. Anyway, it is possible to update Android manually and I cover that in my upgrading Android on rooted device walkthough – there I describe upgrading Motorola Nexus 6 to latest Android 7 (Nougat) but it is very much the same upgrading to any Marshmallow versions.